


pride (it tastes of vinegar and ashes)

by Alemantele



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical, It's actually really interesting and all that, so the Franco-Prussian war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 08:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1219753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alemantele/pseuds/Alemantele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Francis is tired. </p>
<p>Gilbert only smirks. </p>
<p>(Ah, war. It tears down the best of us. Sweet villa France cannot last for long under the rays of the sun.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	pride (it tastes of vinegar and ashes)

Francis is tired.

He sits with his back slumped and head bent in the crowd and tries not to look at the wild procession.

Francis has been tired for a long, long time, but he doesn’t remember the last time he’s felt this sick deep stabbing feeling in his heart or the ache that spreads through his bones. He doesn’t quite remember the last time he’s felt the white hot pain of humiliation this intensely before either.

Instead, Francis tries to ignore the shame that forces his eyes to the ground.

Perhaps he should’ve known better. Perhaps Francis has made one too many bad decisions. Still, he doesn’t quite think that he deserves this unrest – or at least, not this much unrest. Francis knows he’s angered far too many people. But there’s that feeling of pride and being on top of the world he can’t quite forget either which makes his loss that much more stinging.

It feels vaguely of lemons in his wounds, shallow though they may be.

This time, it’s not petty fights with Arthur in the west and trying to prove himself superior once more. There’s no more Sun King and no more lands in the Americas that he was so intent on winning. It’s not Arthur gloating and colonizing the entire west nor is it Alfred and little Mathieu who were lost to him long ago. Perhaps this time it’s not even as bad as the internal revolution that sent his teeth chattering and nails bitten to the quick as he felt the starving people tear him apart little by little.

No, this time, Francis feels that it is the  _last_. He’s never lost his place at the top of the world before, not even with Arthur climbing slowly but surely. Francis had always felt the pride as people moulded their tongues around his language and dressed in his clothes as they praised his conquests. Now, he can’t stop thinking of his people (not his people, not anymore) in Alsace and Lorraine and feel the language and culture and  _everything_  being stripped down to the bone. It’s the bareness left that feels like ice in his veins.

Francis feels himself slipping.

He hesitantly raises his eyes and looks at his beautiful city of Versailles now cast in his own shame and covered with the spoils of the enemy. It feels like salt and vinegar masked with the sickly sweet scent of honey. It burns when he looks yet still, it’s hard to tear his eyes away.

Francis turns his head and somewhere at the edge of his vision, he sees Gilbert, all smirks and grins. Gilbert’s mocking red eyes seem to taunt him, even over the cacophony of people. Francis quickly looks down and tries not to flinch at the predatory glint in those red orbs or the way Gilbert’s smirk feels robbed from him somehow.

Francis thinks that Gilbert is cruel and malicious because yes he won but did he really have to take Francis’s already bowed head and push it further into the mud and dirt?

Somewhere, at the back of his mind, Francis thinks that just maybe he deserved it.

He looks up again and locks his stare with Gilbert’s mocking red eyes. Francis tilts his chin, ever so slightly and tries to look proud in his tattered and mud stained clothes and stringy hair that hangs about his eyes. There’s dirt on his chin and he reaches thin fingers to wipe it away, trying to harden his stare as he forces his back straight again. Francis tells Gilbert that he’s not going to give up, not now, not ever, when their eyes meet.

Gilbert only laughs his hissing, spitting laugh and places a hand on the younger blond haired boy next to him.

Ludwig, Francis thinks, the younger brother born from a time of fighting and war and nations falling even as they rise.

Ludwig, Francis thinks and the hand Gilbert so proudly places on the younger boy’s shoulder speaks to Francis as if raising yet another challenge.

Then, it’s like Francis forgot how he got himself into this mess altogether in the first place as he folds his arms and doesn’t break Gilbert’s stare. Francis refuses to look at Ludwig and instead hardens his eyes condescendingly.

Gilbert smiles wider and leans further into Ludwig, as if goading Francis on. Francis doesn’t consider the fact that he probably is and turns his head from Gilbert’s wild red eyes and Ludwig’s icy blue glare.

If he feels a twinge of wearied fear from the young boy Gilbert presented to him, he doesn’t acknowledge it.


End file.
